Playing with Fire
by DomesticatedWerewolves
Summary: Before she had need of an assassin, Integra needed a companion. She was young, made for elders to sculpt her into a fine leader. And Alucard was just the right kind of psychotic mentor to shape the mold.


Kana: I have no idea where this came from. Probably the same place that my idea to dip mini pretzels into chocolate pudding came from. The pretzels were good, and hopefully this is too.

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing except for these really good pudding-pretzels. Hellsing is not mine, even though I want to play with Alucard's leather jumpsuit way too much. I would constantly unsnap and re-snap the buttons until I drove everyone insane.

**Summary:** Before she had need of an assassin, Integra needed a companion. She was young, made for elders to sculpt her into a fine leader. And Alucard was just the right kind of mentor to shape the mold.

**Notes on the Holy Scripture:** If you look closely, you can see Integra is just about twelve in the manga when she finds Alucard. I always use the manga, because it is as pure as Hellsing can get – straight from the source. The OVAs are nice, but the original anime is not something I particularly like, probably because I watched it when I was ten and scarred myself for life.

These pretzels are dissatisfying now that my pudding cup is empty.

xxx

**Playing with Fire**

**One-shot**

xxx

Inside the mansion of a famous Dutch physician slept a young girl. This girl – a budding woman, really – slept peacefully, something she was able to do easily because she was innocent and barely fourteen. She had never seen a war, had never seen shot from behind as they tried to retreat. Two years ago she had made her first kill, but it was just a drop in an ocean of virtue.

Now, what she had released two years ago was another story altogether. It was made of the blackest of deceit, death, and perversion. It was infamous for corrupting even the purest of hearts and making them its own. It was tall, foreboding, the monster under the bed. It was the cloaked man at the end of a long dark tunnel that would only lead to death.

It was Alucard, and he was standing at the foot of Integra Hellsing's bed.

The vampire's chin rested on the sleek, clean quilt, with patches made no doubt from even Abraham's time. He was kneeling, as his instincts were wont to tell him to, and his long hair was draped over his shoulders and back, pooling on the carpet and staining it black.

"I can hear you _purring_," Integra said, pulling the covers over her head and curling into a ball. She did _not_ want to deal with Alucard this early in the morning, as it was probably at some ungodly hour, maybe even before five. The vampire liked the early morning, because there was no sun, but it still counted as 'being up during the day'. He liked that; it made him feel as if he was above a normal vampire's weakness. But by the time the first slice of orange peeked above the horizon, Alucard was safely in his coffin, in the cellar, where no trace of sunlight could get at him. Like a homicidal hedgehog.

"I'm bored," Alucard said simply. It was unnerving to hear him say common phrases, like 'I'm hungry' or 'I'm bored' because his voice made everything sound like he really meant 'I want to cut off his head, devour his entrails, and clean his bones as a gift to you.'

"That's never a good thing," Integra mumbled, her voice muffled by a healthy amount of blanket. "You and boredom usually means that someone's dead. Is someone dead?"

"No," Alucard answered, smiling his strange smile. It showed no normal joy or anything of the sort, and instead suggested a kind of curiosity, as if he was always waiting for what would happen next. To him, life was an interesting performance. "You would have known if I had defied your orders."

Integra wiggled down further into the sheets, knowing her feet were growing ever closer to Alucard's face. "If no one's dead, then don't bother me."

Alucard looked at the lump that was his master, still amused. "A jaded dog often turns destructive," he said pointedly.

"You are no dog, Alucard," Integra said, becoming impatient. "Even if you do chew on bones, eat anything, and bite."

"I only bite a little."

"A little bite from you usually spells death for everyone else."

xxx

Integra was not always so hip to Alucard's jive. It took her two days after finding him to allow the vampire out of his previous cell, and this was only after several hours of Walter reassuring her that Alucard was trustworthy, even if he was rough around the edges. After that Alucard was still confined to the basement, though he subtly expressed a desire to explore the house. He had a vampire's natural curiosity, and wanted to see what the mansion looked like in the present time.

But the young Hellsing had said no, and in the basement Alucard remained, sating himself by walking through walls and scaring whoever went down there. This meant that many innocent people in service to the Organization were being terrorized, and Integra wouldn't stand for that.

Alucard found it all very amusing when she lectured him. He just looked down at her, his head bent so sharply that his chin rested on his red cravat. His smile had stopped creeping Integra out long ago, so she was able to stand her ground and read him the riot act.

She soon regretted allowing him free reign of the house. Integra had told him – and described the punishments she was prepared to use – the rules she had set up for him, which he was forced to obey by the blood of the Hellsing line. But Alucard found loopholes easily, and by the third day he was a terror to maids and soldiers alike.

Walter suggested she have the vampire follow her around, like a private servant. Alucard was, in a sense, her minder. Though he might not be the best company and could possibly attempt to frighten her as he did the other occupants of the mansion, it would be best to keep him in her sight most of the time.

And so Integra was forced to try and do a job meant for someone significantly older than her…while someone significantly older than _anyone_ followed her around.

Alucard wasn't the…best company, as Walter said, but he was a step up from being alone. He had a tendency to find things funny when she found them disturbing. He made a point to reference bawdy aspects of her femininity when he thought the occasion called for it. And sometimes, just because he could, he changed the length of his hair constantly for an entire day, just to annoy her, because even at twelve, Integra hated inconsistency.

But she didn't know that Alucard was anything but inconsistent.

xxx

The mantra 'he's just trying to get to you' was one of Integra's foolproof ways to cope with Alucard's annoying habits. Two years after finding him she had developed many methods to keep from strangling him with his own cravat, because if she did that would be a waste of a cravat. He was a vampire, and a particularly strong one, which meant he was more immature than most. In fact, he was their child king.

And children are always mystified by shiny things, so when Integra was confronted with a _horrid_ dress that contained an unreasonable amount of glitter on the bodice, Alucard was instantly behind her.

"What the hell is that?" the vampire asked, the derision in his voice as plain as day.

"I think I'm supposed to wear it," Integra said, wrinkling her nose when just picking up the dress caused it to rain glitter onto her bed. She wiped her hands on her olive skirt to try and get the glitter off her palms, but they clung to her stubbornly.

"You should sue." Alucard pulled off a glove and placed his open palm on the dress's bodice. His hand came away clean, unlike Integra's. "Hmm, interesting."

Integra pursed her lips. "How come it doesn't cling to you?"

"I suppose it's because I'm dead," Alucard said, pulling his glove back on. He scratched the bodice slightly, making more blue glitter fall to the bedspread. "No sweat means my hands are always dry, and therefore there's nothing to stick to."

"That must be useful," Integra said, staring ruefully at the specks of glitter in the creases of her fingers.

"Oh yes," Alucard smirked, "the fact that glitter doesn't stick to me is the biggest perk of being a vampire. That's why everyone is afraid of us – one day we're going to dump glitter on everyone, and while you all go insane from your inability to get it off, we're going to take over the world."

"I have no idea why you haven't done this already." Integra folded the dress and stuffed it back into its box. She handed the box to him. "Get rid of this. Be creative."

And so while Alucard did God knows what with that glittery dress, Integra looked into a nice, dignified pair of pants and invested in a pantsuit. That was the last time a sparkling dress disgraced her quilt. Alucard's hellhounds sorely missed being able to flip up the back of her skirt with their noses though.

xxx

It grew hard to remember that Alucard was indeed a monster. There were few vampires for him to kill, so most of the time he was civil. So long as he was fed, Alucard was content, though to find joy he had to annoy the hell out of other people. They had made a sort of a truce – Integra would stay up late into the night and Alucard would do the same, not retreating to his coffin until the sun was high in the sky. And during the day Alucard was as close to human as he could get, with his powers severely weakened and exhaustion tugging at his eyelids until he swallowed his pride and napped on the armchairs in the library while she worked.

Integra grudgingly admitted to herself that Alucard was not so bad – so long as he was sleeping. When not in a deep vampire's sleep, which could only be achieved in a coffin, Alucard looked normal. The hard lines of his face would smooth out, his eyes would close all the way, and he slumped a little, always to the left. He stopped smiling his insane smile, and might even dream whatever vampire's dreamed, probably about blood and violence.

And sometimes she let her guard down in front of him while he slept, and Integra feared that that was a grave mistake. When she confided in Walter about this, the butler confirmed her fears.

"Alucard is bound to your family," Walter told her, looking her square in the eye. "He cannot harm you, but he can test you. He can never draw blood so long as you don't give him direct orders to attack you, but he's found blind spots in the Hellsing family's commands before, and he'll probably do so again."

"But he can't be dangerous all the time," Integra said foolishly. She cursed herself for it immediately afterwards. Alucard was a vampire; he was always dangerous.

Walter smiled slightly, and it had a hint of a smirk in it. "Sometimes he is…less treacherous, but he is _always_ plotting. That's what he does. When he's silent and looks like he's merely thinking, he is not merely thinking. He's staring at you and wondering what your blood would feel like in his mouth, warm and straight from the vein. He's thinking about what he would do first if he was free; break your legs or pull off your fingers. Alucard is thinking a monster's thoughts constantly."

Stunned, Integra couldn't find her voice. She had always known that Alucard was twisted, but never _that_ insane. She figured he might at least think of something else, perhaps his old life, or just of normal things. _Then again,_ Integra reasoned,_ he probably doesn't give a damn of his previous life, and what normal things would he think about? Buying milk? How many eggs there are left in the carton? _No, there was nothing left for Alucard, a vampire with no life left outside the vengeance he desired against her family.

"But," Walter interrupted her, his voice cutting through the rapid thunder of her heart, "I think that, with what little shreds of honor Alucard clings to, he is not _always_ directing his monster thoughts towards you. Constant vigilance is not always necessary. He might be thinking of other things, though it's impossible to guess. Spending time with him is a bit like playing with fire – it's fine to let it burn by itself, but once you see a single spark fly out of line, you have to stamp it out."

"How can you say that?" Integra asked, still horrified at the thought of Alucard wondering what part of her would cause more pain when broken.

"I don't know," Walter said, looking away. "I've seen Alucard…act different around you. Perhaps it is because you are a child, though I know that would never stop his hatred for your family. I think that, maybe, he still hates your family, but he does not hate you. In fact, I believe he tolerates you more than he did your previous ancestors."

Integra wondered why it made her feel happy to be tolerated by something she should hate.

xxx

Waking up after finally getting Alucard to stop pestering her about the lack of things to do – which ended around five thirty – Integra looked around her bedroom.

Alucard was slumped in one of the fancy, uncomfortable armchairs that gave her room a mature feel. Tucked away in a corner with appalling flowery upholstery, the chair clashed with his style of dress, yet he was out cold. His hat was gone, though once Integra had seen it fall off and dissolve before it hit the ground, so she knew she would never find it on the floor. His legs were crossed, and he was making a funny sort of rasping noise.

Integra was a little worried at first, so much so that she even sat up and became completely still so that she could hear it better.

But then she realized the rasping noise was the sound of Alucard breathing.

It was odd to hear it coming from him, and the hoarse accent to it fit him perfectly, like the sound Death would make under its hood. Integra supposed he was sleeping pretty deeply to be breathing, which for a vampire was completely unnecessary. Alucard like to show just how _dead_ he was by standing really close to somebody and staying completely still, without even a muscle twitch or heartbeat to disrupt his little game.

Integra let out a low whistle, and that was all it took to wake Alucard up. He snapped awake so fast that, with the combination of it being daylight (making him weak) and him breathing by accident, he snorted gracelessly as his head snapped up.

Integra laughed so hard she thought she was going to throw up.

xxx

Kana: I have this uncle…and he's a really stern, serious guy. And one day he fell asleep on our couch in the _same_ position Alucard does when he sleeps on his throne. So I instantly thought of Alucard. And he did snort when we woke him up, and he turned really red, cause he never did anything like that. I almost died laughing. It was silly.

So yeah. Anyway, can anyone spot the Harry Potter reference in the dialogue? I'll give you a hint; it has to do with Mad-Eye. I lurve Mad-Eye.

Let's all review because you lurve Mad-Eye.


End file.
